300 Villages: King Cove

“My name is Della Trumble. Um, I am the part-time finance manager for King Cove Corporation and AgdaaduxTribal Council um…administrator and I live in King Cove, AK.

King Cove is surrounded by mountains it’s um…a fishing community. Probably a population of about a thousand; close to a thousand.

The community itself is dependent on the fishing industry. We have Peter Pan Seafoods. The majority of the households are fisherman. We have schools; you know high school, elementary school [and] preschool. Um…so we do have people that work within school district or the Aleutian East Borough or the city of King Cove. Um…the King Cove Corporation, so there are jobs in town other than the fishing industry.

Courtesy of Alan G. May papers, Archives and Special Collections, Consortium Library, University of Alaska Anchorage

Well in the summer if we can get the weather, which we haven’t, we’ve had a lot of rain this summer um…you know we get out in the nice days and defiantly get out hiking and watching bears or, you know, when it gets later in the summer we do our fishing, subsistence fishing and um…berry picking. It’s always a busy time of the year and it’s a fun time of the year.

The biggest issue that we are continuing to work on, have been the last thirty-five years, is the road between King Cove and Cold Bay. And right now we are working um…we’ve been through the EIF [Energy Investors Fund] with U.S. Fish and Wildlife and um…now working with secretary of IndianAffairs, [Kevin] Washburn, who is working with secretary [Sally] Jewell on… basically, trying to look at the human factor and the value of the lands and the land trade that both the King CoveCorporation and the State of Alaska have put forward.

It is a beautiful community. The people here are very nice and the sense of the community in this community has always been pretty awesome for a small…I think um…part of King Cove is about and I think um…it’s it’s just a nice little community.”